SE, you underestimate your power with the cash shop

[Everdark]

Yeah, damn right! They should also increase the subscription fee tenfold! This game isn't for poor people!

EDIT: Just in case anyone wondered... no, I am not serious. I hope the guy I quoted wasn't, either. But I'm afraid he was.

What's really funny is that SE has a history of seeing posts like this and actually doing it :/

remember: Sarcasm + SE = exasperated tears.

[kyuven]

What's really funny is that SE has a history of seeing posts like this and actually doing it :/

remember: Sarcasm + SE = exasperated tears.

I think this is reaching. They don't do this type of thing because of forum posts >_>
And by the way... and this is going to REALLY stir the pot here...increasing our subscription fee actually IS warranted.
In order to stay profitable("b-b-b-but they'd still be profitable with our fees!" yeah investors want to see the numbers grow, not stagnate. There needs to be a wide profit margin or else a venture is considered a failure and the stock loses value), especially with the staggeringly high and growing development costs, SE was basically presented with a choice: Raise our subscriptions, or add a cash shop.
Raising our subscription would cheese EVERYONE off. Adding a cash shop is merely divisive.
Guess which one companies prefer?
It's the same reason bigger budget games are churning out Season passes and day one DLC. The average price for games has not gone up with inflation in the U.S. (Japan is a different story) so even if you sell a million copies, you're not making as much money as if you sold 700k copies 10 years ago.
Now a lot of this is symptomatic of a bigger problem that no one has quite found the solution to yet.

Cash shop is such a horrible invention. Never thought SE would stoop so low.

To reiterate my point: would you rather a cash shop exist, or pay more money per month?

[Magis]

snip

Cause over the 12 year lifetime of FFXI, sub rates rose and cashshops introduced, oh wait no they didn't. Also this game definitely didn't do better than even SE anticipated putting a surplus... yet now the game is doing so bad that it needed a cash shop?

In fact, Yoshi himself said because they did not have to pay back an investment to investors like other companies, they didn't have to go F2P or introduce things like cash shops if things start to dip... unlike SWOR or Tera.

Now, you have Blizzard and you have Square Enix. We’re the only two companies in the industry, basically, that are making MMOs with our own money. That gives us an advantage, because where other companies have to get money from investors and have to pay that back, we don’t have a lot of time to build slowly and be able to pay that back. Investors want their returns right away. With Square Enix and Blizzard, because we’re putting our own money into it, we don’t have those investors to worry about, and that means we can release something and maybe take a little bit of a hit at the beginning, but as long as we’re increasing the amount of people we have, then we’ll get that money and make the players happy. We’ll get into that cycle I talked about before, where we’re creating good content and have that steady income to keep the cycle going.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/fi...lay-exclusive/

[kyuven]

Cause over the 12 year lifetime of FFXI, sub rates rose and cashshops introduced, oh wait no they didn't. Also this game definitely didn't do better than even SE anticipated putting a surplus... yet now the game is doing so bad that it needed a cash shop?

FFXI didn't need a cash shop since they charged an arm and a leg for characters.
You want 8 characters per server here? ~14 bucks a month (depending on payment choice)
8 characters on FFXI? that's about 20 bucks a month.
It's because of that model, being one of the most popular MMOs in the world behind WoW, and being all in-house that FFXI was able to last as long as it did. They also have far, FAR less overhead than FFXIV does.
Like it or not, FFXIV costs more to operate and develop than FFXI does, therefore they need more revenue to match the costs.
Players in this market are not the same as XI. there are things they just won't pay for anymore.
So think about that: FFXIV's development costs from the word "go" are more than FFXI's, and the player demands are higher. If they want to not just STAY profitable, but GROW, they need to have a means of getting more revenue to meet demands.
They can't charge per-character like XI did, and they can't raise subscription costs if they want to remain competitive. Again, they ARE profitable but there are degrees of profitable that come into play here.
So what's the answer? Even though they're all in-house, they still have investors and bosses to answer to. How do you respond to their need to grow the profit margins? "Don't be concerned about it" is not an answer. This is a business. Your answer must generate more revenue to sate the bosses.

[Magis]

snip

The majority of players in XIV play on maybe one or two characters, thanks to the armory system. While many in XI had alts, they were used as mules.... just like SE charges for extra retainers so don't see your point. What are you talking about with WoW? The subscription was similar to FFXI's, and actually gave even more stuff. I don't recall the sub rate ever changing. If anything we got even more than we payed for when comparing the two games.

We already know the "revenue needed" to match costs.... this was told by Yoshi to be at around 500K subscribers. Any more than that is surplus. A set budget is already allocated to the development of the game, planned 4 years out (according to Yoshi again during Fan Expo IIRC?). They wouldn't go into this blind without major planning.

The rest of your post is irrelevant to the customer. I don't care that the CEO of Comcast, BP Oil, or whatever evil company needs a new yacht, I care how they treat their customers (pretty shitty). Same way as I don't care if SE's investors want to get higher dividends, that is irrelevant to the customer, and you trying to excuse SE's double dipping is pretty appalling (unless you yourself own SE stock, then I can see a bias there).

[Niwashi]

And by the way... and this is going to REALLY stir the pot here...increasing our subscription fee actually IS warranted.
... There needs to be a wide profit margin or else a venture is considered a failure and the stock loses value), especially with the staggeringly high and growing development costs, SE was basically presented with a choice: Raise our subscriptions, or add a cash shop.

If that is indeed the choice they faced (which I have some doubts about, as from what I've heard the game seems to have been doing pretty well since its re-launch), then they should have raised the subscription fees. I don't mind being asked to pay a fair price for what I get. I do, however, object to being asked to pay twice for the same thing. Once we've already paid for the entire game and all updates to it, then we should get the entire game and all updates to it, not be asked to pay separately for individual pieces of what we've already purchased.

If SE wanted to add a cash shop, then they should have added a pure F2P option at the same time. They'd lose a few players who are here specifically because they want a P2P game rather than a cash-shop based one, but they'd gain others who won't do P2P. I'd personally find the switch to F2P with a cash shop to be a really annoying one that would greatly damage the enjoyment of the game, but at least it wouldn't involve the sort of bait-and-switch dishonesty of asking us to pay again for stuff we've already paid for.